The invention concerns improved bird hunting decoys and supports for deployed decoys. A hunting decoy according to the invention, for example shaped and colored to represent a wild turkey, has a length-adjustable coupling between a decoy body and a ground support, for selecting a height of the body of the decoy clear of adjacent brush. The coupling is structured to permit free rotation over only a limited angular span around a vertical axis. This causes the body to face in different directions in changing wind without causing it to spin unnaturally. The decoy body can be hollow and flexibly collapsible, and the support can have a mechanical expander that holds the body in an inflated or expanded shape. The support for the body can have a flexible portion or link that allows a nodding movement in a fore and aft direction. The support also can be rigid but fixed flexibly at a point along the dorsal or back portion of the decoy body, and having a shaft that extends though a longitudinally elongated slot in the ventral or belly surface of the body, providing fore and aft clearance for the coupling member and/or ground stake. These arrangements permit the body to nod or bob forward and aft on the support.
The decoy as thereby structured can be deployed in a manner chosen to for the situation. The decoy has motion driven by external forces, specifically wind. The limited motion provides for a lifelike presentation that is more effective in attracting game than decoys having less natural motions such as motions without limitation on their span of displacement.
In one facing arrangement, a lateral pin interacts with a cam or stop surface to limit rotational freedom within a span not greater than 360 degrees. According to an alternative, the pin can interact with a cam defining a preferred facing direction. The structure facilitating nodding of the decoy body can comprise a directionally limited flexing structure, such as a flat spring strip, and this strip can be fixed in a receptacle to limit rotation, thus determining the direction of flexing or nodding. The flat strip can be oriented with its wider sides facing fore and aft and its narrower edges facing laterally of the body, which provides for a bobbing motion in the direction in which the strip is prone to flex. Using a rigid support stake or stand, the nodding is achieved by providing a degree of freedom between the body and the support.
Decoys are known in various shapes and colors to resemble specific animals, a familiar example being game birds. The decoys may be attractive to the corresponding species of game animal or to a different species, as a result of various instincts. These include (for example) social herding or similar safety-in-numbers instincts, predation or other expectation of finding food, opportunities for procreation, the urge to maintain territorial exclusivity, establishment of a place in a hierarchical pecking order, etc.
A decoy advantageously resembles a particular species accurately, at least as to attributes that a target species is inclined to notice. The decoy may be quite realistic, or may simply have critical attributes in common with the particular species it emulates, such as a comparable silhouette, color, movement, sound, odor, etc.
Decoys that appear realistic to humans are more popular among hunters than those that are obviously artificial. The target species may be prone to respond, positively or negatively, to the same aspects as humans, or possibly other aspects. Visually, many animals are highly sensitive to motion.
Visual mimicry is an important consideration, but not the only one. Decoys should be inexpensive to manufacture. The decoy should be compact or subject to packing in a manner that permits a hunter to carry a number of decoys into the field. The decoys should individually be very easy to deploy, quickly and silently, in any terrain that may be encountered, such as open grassland, woods or scrub vegetation.
It is an aspect of the present invention to make a decoy appear life-like because it exhibits a natural motion. The particular motion of the decoy can be as important to appearance as the shape and marking of the decoy body. This is particularly true of game animals such as turkeys, which are very sensitive to motion in their surroundings. The specifics of the motion matter. Unnatural motion can be at least as suspicious and/or unconvincing as a lack of any motion.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,531 describes a bird decoy with motion associated with the head and neck. The decoy body is stationary. A one-piece head-and-neck portion is mounted to the body so that the head and neck may tilt when sufficient wind prevails. The decoy is helpful in that it moves, but it is not representative of a live animal, whose motion is unlikely to involve displacement of an integrally rigid head and neck relative to a rigid stationary body, even when the animal is standing in place.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,637 discloses a decoy in which the decoy body is mounted on a vertical journal axis by bearings. The idea is for ambient breeze to rotate the body on the vertical journal axis without substantial frictional resistance. The journal axis advantageously is set precisely vertical. The weight of the decoy is advantageously balanced evenly on opposite sides of the axis. The mounting comprises a helical spring which enables the breeze to wobble the decoy in the incident direction of the breeze.
In a frictionless rotational mounting of such a type, it is possible that the decoy body may turn one way or the other on the vertical axis, due to wind or another impetus. Turning on a vertical axis may appear natural in some conditions and therefore could be interesting to a game animal. However the wind speed and direction must catch the decoy body just right. If the wind is not at the particular speed and oriented in the specific direction that produces the a convincing motion, the motion may be such that the decoy is caused to appear as an obvious fake. This problem is acute if there are several decoys deployed in a group. It might appear natural and interesting, for example, for decoys in a group occasionally to face in a new direction, for example as live animals in a group might face in unison toward the source of a sound. If decoys in a group rotate freely, a gust of wind could cause them to rotate in different directions and to continue beyond a full revolution. Such motion is mechanical and unrealistic.
If the rotation axis of a journal mounting is not at the center of mass, and the rotation axis is tilted relative to vertical, the decoy body will rotate preferentially to a stable rotational position at which the heaviest part of the decoy is at the lowest elevation. A gust of wind may act to rotate the body due to differences in surface area, for example exerting greater pressure on the thicker tail section than the thinner head section, causing a rotational force. This may rotationally displace the heaviest part of the decoy body from the angular position at which the heaviest part is at the lowest possible elevation. When the wind force subsides, the body tends to rotate back to the preferred orientation, because the heaviest part of the decoy body settles back at the preferred lowermost elevation. Typically, there is an associated rotational oscillation of a decreasing amplitude around the preferred rotational orientation, as the body settles back to the preferred orientation.
When deploying several decoys, particularly in a situation in which the decoys must be placed quickly and quietly before the hunter is spotted by the game, the hunter cannot take time to test and adjust the verticality of the rotation axes and the balance of the decoy bodies so as to face all the decoys in parallel or nearly parallel directions. Some of the ground stakes are likely to be set more near to vertical than others, which causes certain decoys in a group to be prone to rotate in the wind, while others do not. Even if care has been taken and the decoy bodies are all faced in parallel, balanced and aligned on vertical rotation axes, they may respond to a gust of wind by spinning around 360 degrees or more, possibly in different rotational directions, and may look obviously artificial.
A game animal is sensitive to motion and expects to see realistic motion in live animals. Suspicious unrealistic motion detracts from the effectiveness of the decoy. A group of decoy bodies that spin on their axes in a relatively uncontrolled and mechanical way, facing in random directions at any given time, and possibly spinning through more than 180 or even 360 degrees, is suspicious even if the static shape and color of the decoys is highly realistic.
A decoy is advantageously collapsible, for example being made of a thin flexible molded plastic. A molded plastic flexible turkey decoy is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,339,887. More or less collapsible decoys are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,470,645; 3,245,168; 1,822,763. These and the other patents mentioned herein are incorporated for their teachings regarding decoys, materials and methods.
Features that improve a decoy with respect to realism and other categories, should not add substantially to the cost, weight or bulk of the decoy. It would be advantageous if realism could be maximized, or at least if sensitive aspects affecting identification by the target species could be exploited, while preserving the advantages of known decoy arrangements.
The present invention is applicable generally to visual decoys that are intended to approximate the appearance of a particular species, and preferably to exhibit realistic forms of motion. The decoys may represent any species and/or gender to which animals instinctively respond. A particularly demanding subject as well as a good demonstrative example is the American wild turkey.
Wild turkeys are wary animals with acute senses. Male turkeys are territorial and will challenge another male turkey in an established geographical range. Turkeys of either gender may approach other turkeys to establish dominance in a pecking order. Turkeys are large birds but they can fly a substantial distance and thus can very quickly move about in response to situations.
The invention is described with reference to wild turkeys. The invention is also applicable to other particular species. For example, the invention can be applied to decoys representing animals that frequent dry land or water, mammals or birds, prey animals or predators, etc.
Common hunting practice for turkeys and other game may involve tracking or otherwise searching for likely locations, stalking, imitating audible calls, and deployment of one or more decoys followed by lying in wait. The decoys are advantageously lightweight and compact so as to be easily carried to wherever they may be deployed. The decoys need to be deployed quickly and quietly, i.e., assembled or otherwise erected so as to assume a stable realistic pose at a desired location.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,216,382, which is hereby incorporated in its entirety, discloses a collapsible flexible hollow decoy body with an expander mechanism that is opened when inserted into the decoy body to fill out the shape of the animal. The expander mechanism has a central shaft that is oriented vertically when the decoy is deployed and functions like the legs of the simulated animal, such as a turkey, to support the body above the ground. The central shaft can be pressed into the ground to support the decoy. Alternatively, for a rotatable mounting, the shaft can comprise a cylindrical part affixed to the body, that fits within a cylindrical shaped receptacle of a base part such as a tubular stake having a sharpened point that is pressed into the ground to support the assembly. Alternatively the central shaft can be hollow and can receive one end of a pin-like stake that is pressed into the ground. In either case, the decoy can rotate freely around a vertical axis defined by the central shaft.
The present invention seeks to employ the general structure of a decoy carried on a substantially vertical shaft with a rotational connection, to provide decoys that have a certain range of motions that better mimics the natural motion of live animals. Live animals may interact with one another, turn in unison to face a possible threat, but typically do not act randomly or mechanically. The present invention is directed to achieving a more natural appearance by providing motion limited in certain ways.
One aspect of the present invention is a decoy assembly including an animal decoy and a mounting mechanism for the animal decoy. In preferred embodiments arranged for combined height adjustment and limited rotation, the mounting mechanism has a telescoping configuration in which a shaft of a hollow body expander mechanism extends into a tubular ground stake. A series of holes are spaced along the expander mechanism shaft and a pin is inserted laterally through one of the holes. When the shaft is inserted in the stake, the pin rests against the top of the stake, thus fixing the height of the expander and the height of the decoy body. This permits the decoy body to be set at the necessary height to be visible over brush, without being so high as to expose its stilt-like support shaft.
The top end of the ground stake is cut out to form an angular stop or at least a stable orientation angle. The expander and the decoy body can rotate relative to the ground stake, thereby also rotating the pin in the lateral hole, up to the point at which the inserted pin abuts against an edge of the cut-out top of the ground stake. This permits adjustment of the decoy height and permits rotation only over a limited angular span.
According to another aspect the decoy body is permitted to bob or rock fore and aft on its support. According to one embodiment, the decoy body is a flexible plastic molding and is attached to a support shaft by a screw passing through the back of the body into the end of the support shaft. The support shaft fits into the ground stake as discussed above. The opposite (ventral) side of the decoy body is provided with an elongated slot extending forward and rearward from the supporting shaft and stake. This slot provides clearance for the body to tilt forward or rearward relative to the support shaft and stake, providing a bobbing action.
According to another alternative, the bobbing action can be provided by means of a blade-like flexible spring member fixed between the support shaft and the ground stake. The stake is pressed into the ground and forms a stable substantially vertical base. The decoy body can be engaged directly on the top end of the spring member, or more preferably, the spring member can attach to the body via an expander mechanism and can have vertical displacement and limited rotational capability as discussed.
The spring member is a thin flat strip oriented such that the longer dimension of its cross section is lateral to the decoy body. The strip thus bends freely in a direction that corresponds to the decoy body bobbing forward and rearward, and not laterally (the body is free to pitch but not to yaw).
These and other aspects of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art in view of the following discussion and the appended claims.